


glitch

by shier



Series: alien bobby au [1]
Category: iKON (Kpop)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, trippy space shenenigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 09:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9540800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shier/pseuds/shier
Summary: Junhoe wakes up and everything is white.





	

“Eighteen minutes,” Junhoe announces loudly, looking at his watch. He abandons the coffee he’d been nursing with a loud clang. “I should check on him.”

“I don’t sense any other presences,” Bobby says slowly, like he knows that Junhoe’s currently conjuring up the worst case scenario. He can probably _see_ Junhoe conjuring up worst case scenarios. But then again, they’d been on this shitty excuse of a cargo craft for weeks, so it's not like Junhoe doesn't have any excuse for paranoia when the unexpected appears. But Bobby smiles and closes his hand over Junhoe’s—Junhoe’s starting to understand the merits of hand-holding, however hard it had been for him to get used to it at first, but maybe only when it’s Bobby—and adds, “But we can check on him.”

“Fucking _aliens_ ,” Junhoe grumbles under his breath, though he slides his fingers between Bobby’s. Sometimes, he fancies he can imagine sparks, that the glitter splashed across Bobby’s skin creates static of some kind, that he might be able to feel half of what Bobby feels that makes him crave contact half as much as he does. Sometimes, he thinks he’s full of shit. “You stay here. No point getting the both of us knocked out. Got your taser?”

“I still don’t see why I have to—” Bobby retorts.

“Do you have it or not?” Junhoe snaps, before Bobby can devolve into his spiel about why he doesn’t want to carry arms of any kind: because he’s “peaceful” and “would never resort to violence” and “thinks brute force is a human condition”. Junhoe would like to see Bobby talk himself out of a hostage situation.

“... I do,” Bobby sighs, dropping Junhoe’s hand to pull out the small, unassuming metal square.

“Good.” The chair scrapes noisily against the ground when Junhoe gets up. “If Donghyuk’s finally addressing his five years of tension with Yunhyeong down there, he owes me his meat pack for a _month_.”

It’s quiet all the way down to the engine room, so quiet that not even the rattle that Donghyuk and Yunhyeong had gone to investigate is no longer quite audible. It’s hard to disguise the sound of heavy boots against metal ground, but it’s not like Junhoe actually wants to walk into something he can never unsee.

The engine room is dark when the door hisses open. He pauses for a second, giving the motion sensors time to detect him, except… nothing. No lights flicker on, no sound of Donghyuk or Yunhyeong. Or _any_ kind of sound, actually.

“Guys?” he starts, taking a careful step into the room. What the hell could it be this time? “This isn’t the time to fuck around because I haven’t finished my coffe—” Something moves and Junhoe regrets not manually switching on the lights. “—I’m going to skin all of you ali—”

The last thing he sees, or, well, it’s too dark to see, really, so the last thing he feels is something hitting the back of his head and then— 

 

 

/

 

 

 —Junhoe wakes up and everything is white.  
  
Wait, no, that's not quite right. He blinks and the white shifts into shapes, blurry around the edges, he blinks again and the shape shifts, turning the colour of light caramel, and when he blinks again, he gets a face full of Bobby with his sleep mussed hair and the sound of his groaning as he burrows into Junhoe's chest.  
  
"What are you, a dog?" Junhoe grunts out, willing for his head to stop spinning. Did he hit his head some time in the course of the night? Did they— Ah. Right. The drinking. Them celebrating Bobby's new job. Right, okay. The happiness from last night seemed so far away now, shrouded in head-splitting pain and the fact that his mouth tasted like ass. "Stop it."  
  
"Never drinking again," Bobby croaks, his breath hot against the thin material of Junhoe's shirt. Bobby’s still in his button-up, the usually neatly pressed material now crumpled and unfit for office wear. Junhoe makes a non-committal sound, dragging the blankets over both of their heads. Maybe they should just stay in here for a while. Everything else can come later.

 

 

/

 

 

"...ike I said," Bobby declares loudly from somewhere above Junhoe, his chest rumbling with indignation, "There's no way that you can keep an illusion for _that_ long. Long cons are one thing, but this— Junhoe?” He finds himself with his back pressed to Bobby’s chest, his head pillowed against Bobby’s shoulders. He blinks: the gaps of white mould itself into the rectangular shape of their television. He blinks again, trying to remember what he’s doing here, but then Bobby has his lips to Junhoe’s temple, his laughter soft and breathy against the side of Junhoe’s face. “You fell asleep again, didn’t you? Old man.”

“Hey! I worked for twenty hours straight,” Junhoe protests, and... right. That sounds right. That’s exactly it. He’d been at the desk for a full day, trying to tamp down on the workload known as the closing of the fiscal year. Or something along those lines, anyway. His brain feels too much like cotton wool for concrete thoughts.

“Have you considered maybe going to be—” Bobby stops, sucking in a sharp, gasping breath. Junhoe can feel his muscles contract, like he’s been punched in the gut, and he straightens immediately, twisting around with concern. This isn’t the first time it’s happened; Bobby’s debilitating headaches had been occurring since the morning they woke up hung-over.

“Have _you_ considered maybe going to the doctor?” Junhoe asks instead, although the bite is lost with how tense and concerned he sounds. No matter what bullshit Bobby makes up about his phenomenal genes, something that hurts this much can’t mean anything good. He slips an arm around Bobby’s waist, stroking his back to provide what minimal comfort he can. “I’m serious. I’ll make an appointment tomorro—”

“You know how I feel about doctors,” Bobby says, through gritted teeth.

“You don’t like them, right, but you could also _die_ ,” Junhoe replies emphatically, softly, touching his free hand to Bobby’s cheek. _We should tell Donghyuk_ , Junhoe thinks. And then immediately: _who the hell is Donghyuk?_ “Do you want a painkiller?”

“... please,” Bobby says, but he curls up against Junhoe like folding himself in half could make the pain go away. Junhoe’s chest tightens with a familiar worry (but what worry?) and he wraps his arms loosely around Bobby’s shoulders, trying his best to will the pain away.

In the background, Edith Piaf warbles quietly as the screen, unwatched, turns to white.

 

 

/

 

 

Junhoe wakes up and everything is white.  
  
Wait, no, that's not quite right. It's white but it's not white; there are lights bearing down on him, like a displaced spotlight. He blinks and he blinks and the white shifts into grey. He blinks again and the outline of crisscrossing wires appears.  
  
Panic floods him immediately. He struggles (but he’s bound to something, the thick edges pressing in against his chest against his legs against his—), his throat working with the effort to make a noise, to try and form the word _help_ , instinctually. _Danger_ , he's in—  
  
"Junhoe," comes a gravelly voice next to his ear, distant but familiar, like a beacon of light. "Babe, wake up—" Junhoe blinks and Bobby's face swims into view, the white room with the wires fading out like a bad dream. It’s just a bad dream. "You alright?"  
  
"No," Junhoe answers gruffly, sucking in deep breaths. The room smells faintly of antiseptic, of the sterile cold air of hospital corridors. He sucks in another deep breath and this time, all he takes in is the fabric softener of their sheets, the smell of Bobby's shampoo.  
  
"Bad dream?" Bobby asks. Junhoe feels him shift until he's bearing over him, his chest pressed against Junhoe's own, like he knows that what Junhoe needs now is an anchor. "Was it the plant monster again?"  
  
"Asshole," Junhoe says, shaking off the last of the fear like he's been trapped and he can't escape and they're going to get him they've gotten him an— "That one's on you."  
  
"It's not my fault you couldn't take a horror movie," Bobby retorts, though his voice is still soft and levelled. His hand finds Junhoe's in the silence that follows because Junhoe isn't going to dignify that with an answer, and he threads their fingers together. "Was it... What did you see? In the dream?"  
  
“I… I don’t know," Junhoe answers, trying to recall the images without bringing back the flooding fear and the urge to run run run. Feet pounding on the ground. Metal clanging, and in the distance, a flash of glittering blue— he forces his eyes open, only to find Bobby watching him with something akin to trepidation in his expression, like he's scared of Junhoe's answer. “Definitely not the plant monster.”

Bobby laughs, but it’s the kind of laughter you hear when someone’s nervous. Anxious laughter. Laughter that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. So Junhoe cups his cheek, touches his thumb to where Bobby’s laugh lines would be. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a bad dream.”

There’s a moment when Bobby’s expression cracks and Junhoe can feel the fear bleed out of him, saturating Junhoe’s chest with dread. (fear?) He knows the second Bobby’s going to say something doubtful, feels the moment slot into place. And: “But what if it isn't?”

“If you're trying to psychoanalyse me at ass o’clock, I swear I'm gonna—”

“No,” Bobby says, very quietly, “I'm serious. What if your dream is… is—” Junhoe hears Bobby’s voice shape the word in his head, hears _reality_ come out as shakily and unsurely as his dream had been. And that's all he wants it to be: shaky and unsure and in no way real.

“3 a.m. isn't the time for conspiracy theories, okay?” Junhoe says coaxingly (that can't be it he can't be right that doesn't even make sense it _can’t_ make sense) carding his hand through Bobby’s hair. There’s something strange about the texture of Bobby’s hair, something not quite right about it, something about it that makes it feel different from the million other times Junhoe’s done this. He slides his palm down instead, cups around the curve of Bobby’s neck.

“I just can't shake the feeling, you know? Ever since that night, the celebration—”

“The night the headaches begun?” Junhoe quips, narrowing his eyes meaningfully.

“Stop talking like I'm going to die.” Junhoe rolls his eyes and Bobby heaves a sigh. “Alright, if I let some guy poke me with needles, would that make you feel better?”

“Much,” Junhoe returns gruffly. He touches the pad of his index finger to Bobby’s forehead, draws it down the tip of his nose (wrong wrong wrong wrong), and then replaces his finger with his lips.

 

 

/

 

 

They met in the middle of a desert—

No, that's not quite it.

They met in the middle of a metal container—

That's not it either.

They met in America, in New York, where Junhoe had done a summer exchange program.

Yeah, that's the one. They met in the middle of winter, when Junhoe had gotten hopelessly lost and too frustrated to be able to properly articulate what he wanted to say the citizens of New York. He remembers it now, the grey skies, the squat ugly buildings, like something off a postcard (doesn't he have that exact same postcard taped to a wall?), and Bobby literally running into him. Junhoe had cussed him out and Bobby had laughed. Bobby had laughed and Junhoe had felt himself falling easily into that, stupidly, cheeks heating up like he’d been caught throwing a tantrum. Like he’d been exposed.

They made their way back to Junhoe’s dorm without event and a promise for coffee the following week and the rest, as they say, is history.

But that's _still_ not quite right (he remembers running, remembers red on his hands, then remembers blue on his hands, Bobby’s eyes in the dark and a loud roaring in his ears and)—

 

 

/

 

 

“I saw wires,” Bobby says over the phone. “Inside me. Coming out of me.”

It's 3 a.m. where Bobby is, and it's daytime where Junhoe is. Which means he’s somewhere else. A business trip, probably. The details aren't important now. What’s important is that Bobby’s voice is about as stable as the line they're on. He shields his eyes from the blinding white sunlight coming from overhead and switches his phone to his other hand.

“It's just a nightmare,” Junhoe says (wires? he’s seen those wires, right? ...hasn’t he?) as quietly and calmly as possible. “It doesn't mean anything.” There’s a heavy silence, the sound of Bobby gulping, his frustration bleeding palpably even across oceans and phone lines. “Look, I can be home by—”

“You're right,” Bobby says. He sounds tired now, scared and tired and Junhoe? Junhoe doesn't know what the fuck to do. _Donghyuk would know_ , he thinks, and then _if Donghyuk was here I wouldn’t be here._ “It's just a nightmare. Plant monster.”

“Plant monster,” Junhoe echoes. But now that he's heard Bobby’s voice ( _no, Junhoe, don't let them— please_ ), he can't shake the feeling of anxiousness, the feeling of being trapped. “Stupid fucking plant monster.”

There's silence on the phone—and there’s never silence between them, not unless he counts the beat between Bobby leaning forward and Junhoe kissing him for the first time—a static filling up the quiet like a bad radio signal. The white noise converges and hits a high tone, and then dissipates again. And Bobby’s still silent.

“Maybe we should take a break. Go visit your parents. My mom always said that country air is good for you,” Junhoe says, in a fit of inspired genius, crossing his fingers (since when was he the type?) and hoping it works.

“My parents,” Bobby echoes slowly, like the concept is foreign to him. “My _parents_.”

“Yeah, your _parents_ ,” Junhoe says, edging easily to sarcasm. “Remember? The ones you grew up with? The ones we met last Christmas?” Although now that Junhoe’s talking about it, he can’t conjure up a clear picture. He must be getting old, but the feeling of overwhelming affection is still there. “ _Those_ parents?”

“... yeah,” Bobby says, after a beat. “Them. Of course. If you’re free.”

“I am,” Junhoe says, with a hint of finality. “I’ll make time.”

 

 

/

 

 

Junhoe wakes up and everything is white.

He blinks and the whiteness pigeonholes itself. It's a window. No wires anywhere. None at all. He rubs his face and shuts the airplane window shade. There's something he needs to do, someone he needs to—

“You look like you've seen a ghost,” the passenger next to him says. He looks familiar, with his broad-set shoulders and too-bright grin. As if Junhoe being woken by the bright sunlight was something funny to him. “Water?”

“Uh, no,” Junhoe says shortly (you know him, you know it's him). “Thanks.”

“Don’t like air travel, huh?’

“Am I _that_ obvious?” Junhoe asks. He’s not usually this cavalier with strangers, but he feels grounded somehow, despite being several thousand feet up in the air. The passenger laughs, his eyes narrowing in a way that reminds Junhoe of someone he knows, but he’s too disoriented to put his finger on a name now.

“At least we’re landing. Look,” the guy nods up at the _FASTEN SEATBELTS_ light, now glowing brightly, casting an orange light on everything else. “We’re getting out soon, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” Junhoe says, settling back into his seat (and when he gets out, he’s going to—), “at least there’s that.” He closes his eyes for a brief moment, and when he opens them again, the airplane is still and people are petering out into the aisles. The guy next to him is nowhere to be found, but there’s a folded note on his seat. Junhoe picks it up, intending to return it to him if it’s important—it _must_ be important. There’s something about the note, a heaviness that belies significance, so he unfolds it and—

 

 

/

 

 

He sees Bobby standing by the kitchen counter, his shoulders hunched as he washes the dishes in only his sweatpants. He’s seen this a million times before (and yet he’s never seen it before) but Junhoe steps up to him anyway, slides an arm around his waist. If he closes his eyes, if he just lets himself breathe in the scent of Bobby’s soap, of the faint smell of smoke from their grilled meat dinner, it almost seems _right_. No, it is right. What’s wrong is—

“Feeling sentimental?” Bobby asks laughingly, tipping back so his gaze meets Junhoe’s. He’s tired. Junhoe can feel he’s tired. A tiredness that’s bone-deep and weary and can’t be solved with sleep or a good blowjob. “Or did you cheat on me?”

Junhoe splutters loudly, his hand dipping under Bobby’s sweatpants (doesn’t mean he can’t try, doesn’t mean he can’t have what’s his, because this is his, right? this is all his, and it’s always his, and he doesn’t ever have to second guess that), nails dragging lightly over sensitive skin, until Bobby pouts and whines and taps Junhoe’s nose with a soapy hand. “I can’t believe you would _besmirch my honour like that_ ,” Junhoe says loudly, biting Bobby’s earlobe.

“Babe,” Bobby protests, “can’t you wait until I’ve gotten the soap _off_ my hands?”

“No,” Junhoe replies immediately. The centre of Bobby’s back feels hot against Junhoe’s chest and when he draws back, he sees a faint circle of words there, the skin inside it not quite _skin_. He blinks and he blinks and there it is: Bobby’s tattoo. He never thought he’d forget about _Bobby’s tattoo_ , not after that first week he’d spent fucking Bobby into the mattress with his hand pressed to his back, because it may as well pass for a _place hand here_ marker. “What if the world ends in the next five minutes?” (too good to be true) “You wouldn’t want your last earthly act to be dishwashing, would you?” Junhoe presses his mouth to Bobby’s ear and then he’s—

 

 

/

 

 

Junhoe blinks and he sees white.

He arches up against Bobby, gasping loudly as the white washes over him, as Bobby continues to hold him in place. And then it’s all over and Bobby’s pressing errant kisses against his cheek, his neck, his torso and it tickles and Junhoe laughs and shoves weakly at him.

“Is this how you treat someone who just made you come?” Bobby questions, sounding so much like Junhoe that he cracks an eyelid open to look at him. For the first time in forever, Bobby looks loose and relaxed and much more like the guy Junhoe had fallen in love (really? of course _really_ why is he second guessing this?) with.

“Fuck off,” Junhoe says. Bobby gets up to reach over Junhoe. In the half-light, his skin almost seems to glimmer blue. He thinks of the passenger on the plane, the dark blue glimmer of his shirt, the look in his eye like he knows Junhoe. Like Junhoe’s supposed to know him.

“Yeah, I’ll sleep in the bathtub tonight,” Bobby complains loudly. The sound of his footsteps receding when he disappears into the bathroom.

When he doesn’t come back for a while, Junhoe forces himself up and traces his path. “I can’t believe you’re really going to—” Junhoe stops at the sight of Bobby staring at himself in the mirror, his eyes wide and fearful. (not this again why is it always this again) “Bobby?”

“The nightmare I had,” Bobby says, his voice still light and teasing. “It’s not just a nightmare, is it?”

“... _what_?”

“You’re not Junhoe,” Bobby says quietly, surely. Something cold strikes Junhoe’s chest, like the first time he’d been shot. (but when was he ever shot? was that him or was that another nightmare?) “You _can’t_ be Junhoe.”

“Bobby, I swear to fucking _god_.”

“How did you know?” Bobby continues. His form seems to shift, for a second, the outline of his body blurring and then merging again. “About him? You can’t— _he’s_ not up for discussion.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The human whose face you’re wearing. _Junhoe_.”

 _But I’m Junhoe_ , he wants to protest, but the way Bobby looks at him tells him that’s it’s going to be an exercise in futility. “Look, you’re tired. It’s been a long week. Let’s go to bed, okay?” There’s that silence again. Heavy. Pregnant with the unspoken. Junhoe’s skin prickles and he tells himself everything is alright. Everything is _right_.

He breathes a sigh of relief when Bobby says, “Yeah, alright. Sorry.”

 

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

It’s not the blinding white, no, he’s gotten used to that. Maybe he needs to get that checked out with Bobby and his headaches. Maybe he— no, he's letting himself get distracted from the unsettling clamminess that’s come over him. He gets up and exits his cubicle, pacing and pacing and pacing and pacing. The office is deathly quiet and empty, and he doesn’t remember saying _hi_ to the middle-aged man who works next to him when he came in this morning. Maybe he’s taking the day off. For his daughter’s graduation or something along those lines.

At his desk, he reaches for his desk phone and presses the handle to his ear.

“I can’t do this,” he hears Bobby say, “please don’t make me do this.”

“Do what?” Junhoe asks. What was it they’d been talking about? Dinner reservations? Defrosting the chicken at home?

“Make me live this out with him. _For_ him. Please.” His voice is a faint croak now, and Junhoe’s never heard Bobby beg like that before. “We both know what this is.”

“Uh, are you sure about that? Where the hell are you?”

“Don’t,” Junhoe hears him say, his voice suddenly loud and everywhere all at once. “Don’t use his voice like that.” Something’s slipping from him, that much is sure. He looks up and his cubicle is gone, and his desk is gone and he’s—

 

 

/

 

 

“—but the most unrealistic part of it all,” Junhoe hears distantly, like a faraway conversation he’s not supposed to be privy to, “was that he let me call him _babe_.” He wills his eyes to open but they don’t want to cooperate. He knows what he’s going to see anyway: first white, and then the wrong shade of Bobby.

No, wait, that’s not it. That’s not right. Something warm touches his hand and he makes a sound. Weak, even to his own ears. And then the rest of the sounds come rushing in, the constant beeping, the low hum of the ventilation, the sudden recognition that Bobby’s talking to someone else, someone who’s laughing softly. _Donghyuk_ , he thinks, _there you are_.

“He’s waking up,” Bobby says softly.

“I thought we were dampening the mental link with—”

“He’s waking up,” Bobby repeats. “I told you, doesn’t work. Not when it’s—”

“You and him?” Donghyuk finishes, the lilt in his tone suggests teasing, but Bobby doesn’t respond. Junhoe groans, hating the heavy silence even when he’s not participating in it. “That must’ve been tough, what happened when you guys were under.”

“I always knew something was wrong,” Bobby says, “I just— it was just— it could easily have been _right._ ”

“I know,” Donghyuk says, just as softly. “Logic doesn't work with some things.”

 

 

/

 

 

Later, Junhoe learns it was a neurological conduit. Later still, he learns that everything was him. Well, him and Bobby, but he hasn’t seen enough of Bobby to make sense of who conjured what up. And it's not like he wants to, anyway. A one night stand was usually awkward enough; a prolonged fantasy in which they had been in a long-term relationship is a whole other ball game that Junhoe doesn't know the rules to. And he's never been very good at losing.

“It didn't work on us,” Donghyuk had told him during their meeting, “me and Yun woke up a day later. Him screaming—” “ _Hey!_ ” “—but you guys stayed under. They knew who Bobby was. Knew what Bobby could do. _Can_ do.”

And then the rest of the meeting had been about strategies they had to undertake and what they were going to do with the prisoners they had in the brig. But no one had asked Junhoe if he was alright. They’d poked him plenty, stuck those scanners over his head and drew out a map of his neurological pathways and found him to be in Top Condition. But some nights he still wakes up and turns to throw an arm around a person who isn't there.

It’s easier to pretend that none of it ever happened. If Donghyuk asks—and Junhoe doesn’t know what Bobby has told him, doesn’t know how honest Bobby’s been, mostly because Junhoe’s been avoiding him like a black hole—then Junhoe’s going to stick with the answer he’s used since he woke up: he doesn’t remember anything. Because it’s not that he can’t pin down the details of the dream (what else could it be called?), the _wrongness_ of it all; it’s that he can remember the wrongness with exact clarity, and still wants to believe it to be true.

“You’ve got to talk to him eventually,” Yunhyeong tells him after Junhoe narrowly avoids dinner with everyone by insisting that he had, for the tenth time, some repairs to do in his room. “This craft has, like, four people.”

“I don’t tell you to tell Donghyuk how you feel about him,” Junhoe shoots back sharply, watching Yunhyeong’s eyes widen, then avert in embarrassment. He would feel bad, except he’s seen Yunhyeong and Donghyuk pansy-footing around each other for too long to feel anything but desensitised.

“It just might help if you two, you know, worked it out. Together. Like adults,” Yunhyeong says, quieter this time, more abashed.

“He’s an alien and we just emerged from a year-long dream,” Junhoe points out, deadpan. “What is there to discuss?”

“The fact that you were together and he—” Yunhyeong stops dead when he catches Junhoe’s eye, “—never mind. You’re terrifying, you know that?”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

 

 

/

 

 

Junhoe wakes up and he sees the clock over his head blink a big, red _0349_. _Real_ , he thinks, twisting the blanket under his hand. _This is real_. Then he closes his eyes and feels the warmth of Bobby’s laughter against his neck and he thinks, _this is real too._ He sits up because it isn't fair. It isn't fair that the universe decided to give him a glimpse of what normalcy looks like and then decided to haunt him with it in the small hours of the morning and rob him of sleep.

Junhoe rubs his face and swings his legs off the bed, shuffling blearily out of his room, the door sliding open and shut with an unordinarily quiet whoosh, like it knows not to bother him. He finds himself in the kitchen. Old habits die hard even if there isn't any liquor on board. None of the kind that Junhoe’s used to, anyway. The kind that he _likes_. He washes his face in the sink, rubs away the feeling of Bobby’s hand on his jaw, of Bobby’s thumb on his lips. It isn't even the first time it's happened--Junhoe’s been the recipient of Bobby’s touchy-feely tendencies before. He can't exactly reject the guy who’d saved his life, not when Bobby seemed to need it to feel at ease. “Aliens,” he’d justified to himself with a roll of his eyes the first time Bobby had slid into his bunk with him. Foreign place, foreign species; it's the least Junhoe could do for him. After that, if Junhoe enjoyed it a little—the attention, the easy affection—he's going to chalk it up as a win-win situation.

Junhoe sighs, grabs a mug off the counter and fills it with water. He nearly chokes when he hears Bobby come up behind him, saying, “You're thinking too loud.” He swipes his mouth clean, unsure as to why he’s afraid to turn around. _Maybe_ , he thinks, nails digging into the side of the cup, _maybe you want it all to be real_. But he’s never been the type for speculations: it’s either do or die. It’s always been do or die, so what makes the Bobby the exception?

He tamps down the thoughts that tell him _he_ made Bobby the exception, technically, with his own dumb feelings, and spins around, leaning against the counter as he appraises Bobby. It’s strange how fast he’d gotten used to a Bobby that looked human instead of shimmery blue, given that none of that actually happened at all.

“And you’re walking too quietly. What the hell did I tell you about sneaking up on me?”

“That I should do it more when you’re trying to avoid me?”

Junhoe freezes in the middle of lifting his cup to his mouth; it’s so easy to forget that Bobby can _read his fucking mind_ , because he’s never had to consider that possibility before. Easier to put on a stony expression to disguise his feelings when they’re not spilling everywhere for the other person to notice. “Fucking aliens,” Junhoe murmurs under his breath, taking a long drink from his cup. Fucking _water_.

“I think that’s what you humans call a ‘racial slur’?” Bobby asks, and Junhoe hates that while he’s as transparent as glass, Bobby’s still an impenetrable wall to him. The silence that lapses over them is awkwardly sticky and Junhoe wishes that he’d never gotten out of bed in the first place. Better the stupid visions of the stupid life he’s never had than this. But Bobby’s eyebrows furrow and Junhoe _knows_ he’s projecting. Loudly. Again. So he quickly changes track and thinks about his water instead, thinks of the rusted corner of the kitchen ceiling, of the way the chairs are set in disarray, thinks about—

“Is that what you want?” Bobby asks suddenly, sending Junhoe’s line of normal thoughts into a ditch. “For me to look the same as you?”

Junhoe pauses, trying to consider this as quietly as possible. _No_ , he thinks, meeting Bobby’s eyes stubbornly. Because that isn’t it. Sure, Bobby’s strangeness had taken some adjusting to, but now Junhoe thinks he might not have— that everything in the dream might not have happened the same way if Bobby _were_ human.

“That’s not it,” Junhoe eventually says, figuring that not saying things aloud was only going to hinder… whatever _this_ is. “It’s… not real.”

“Oh,” Bobby says, and then says nothing at all.

“What do you mean, _oh_?” Junhoe demands, unable to stop the anger from edging into his voice. He’d lost _sleep_ over this. “Is that all you have to say? _Oh_? What the hell’s that supposed to mean anyway?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Bobby repeats—he’s picking up bad habits from hanging out with them for too long, Junhoe _knows_ this—with a small grin on his face that Junhoe doesn’t like one bit, “that’s what all the confusion is. _You_ think it’s not real.”

“3 a.m. isn’t the time for conspiracy theories, okay?” Junhoe says dryly, dropping his cup into the sink with a loud clatter. He’ll deal with it in the morning, when he doesn’t feel like he should have stayed planet-bound and become a farmer instead. Space travel is always complicated, and it’s even more complicated when Bobby’s around. “... you’re staring.”

“You said that before. When we were togethe— when we were in here,” Bobby says, tapping his finger against his temple. “You were having a bad dream and I… I thought—” The image comes easily to Junhoe; he can almost feel the texture of Bobby’s brown hair between his fingers. Brittle, from years of shitty DIY dye jobs, but soft. Junhoe doesn’t even want to know which one of his exes he’d drawn that memory from. “I thought _you_ were the dream.”

“... I thought you didn’t dream,” Junhoe says, for a lack of something coherent to say. _You can’t be Junhoe_ , Bobby had said, his words rushing into Junhoe’s mind all at once. The coldness of it, the disbelief, the look of despair on his face. Junhoe’s the dream. Junhoe’s a figment of Bobby’s imagination. _Don’t use his voice like that._ He’d nearly forgotten all of it, all of Bobby’s doubt that he’d conveniently ignored when they were under. It was easy to pretend like nothing’s wrong when reality was fluid. It was easy to pretend like nothing’s wrong when Junhoe had everything he thought he’d wanted.

“I _know_ I didn’t dream,” Bobby says, emphatically, taking another step closer, and then another, and then there’s no space between them at all and Junhoe can feel the heat radiating off his bare chest. _Real_. “You were there with me.” Junhoe blinks and he sees— he _thinks_ he sees Bobby closing in on him, warm and affectionate, his brown hair hanging wet and messy over his face, he sees Bobby’s hands close over his hips to shove him up against the counter, sees the curve of Bobby’s chest as he leans back to shed his shirt quickly, and he’s _stuck_ because sometimes, he forgets how holes in shirts work, and Junhoe’s urgency gives way to amusement and he starts laughing and—

He side-steps Bobby neatly, gulping hard, feeling stupidly lost, _exposed_. “I wasn’t,” Junhoe says quietly, “because that wasn’t me _and_ you. That was me. That was all me. You didn’t know— How could _you_ possibly know what _all that_ meant? You’ve never— you’re not a _person_.” He knows he said the wrong thing the second that Bobby flinches back like he’s been burned. “That’s… not what I meant. Look, it’s late, and we’ve had… a long month. Can’t we just go to sleep and forget this ever fucking happened?”

“Okay,” Bobby says, his tone as unreadable as ever. “If that’s what you want.”

“What I want,” Junhoe grumbles under his breath, stiffly pushing past Bobby in order to get to the door, “is to sleep and never wake up.” When he glances back, he sees Bobby standing the same spot, the [mark on his back shimmering](https://68.media.tumblr.com/826cb108e5f07bb70acd97f4548e8300/tumblr_od396gUupt1rqpkxto2_400.gif) for a split second, looking so intimidatingly solitary that Junhoe wonders if _this_ is the nightmare instead. Then the door shuts automatically and Junhoe sees nothing at all.

 

 

/

 

 

“So what shall we do with them?” Donghyuk asks, his hands on his hips as he surveys the prisoners in their cells, oblivious to being watched from the other side.

“Leave them on the next wasteland planet we see with nothing but their underwear? No, maybe not even their underwear,” Junhoe muses, tapping his stylus against the edge of his tablet. “Or we could hand them over to the homebase and see how little their lives matter.”

“You’ve been watching too many of those gangster movies,” Donghyuk tells him distractedly, tapping a few more keys on the computer, checking and re-checking that everything’s functioning right and they’re not about to be hit by another round of a trip down under. “Doesn’t work like that.”

“Yeah, because solitary confinement in a box barely big enough for you to move constitutes as _living_ ,” Junhoe says, rolling his eyes as he drops his tablet to the console with a loud clatter.

“That’s also a myth,” Donghyuk corrects monotonously, eyes brightened by the reflection from the screen. “Where would we even store all the bodies?”

“That’s what they _want_ you to think,” Junhoe says, propping his legs up on the console. That earns a scoff from Donghyuk, and a swipe that causes his booted feet to fall to the ground with a loud thud. “Have you ever considered _that_?”

“Instead of nonsense, have _you_ considered patching things up with Bobby?” Donghyuk tears his eyes from the screen to glance at Junhoe, fixing him with a look that’s all too knowing and too smug at once.

“Are you and Yunhyeong tag teaming me?” Junhoe questions, sitting up so he can take flight any moment the conversation gets just the slightest bit uncomfortable. “Because I deserve to know if you guys are tag teaming me. Then I can complain to the boss about a hostile work environment.”

“All these words and none of them actually _mean_ anything,” Donghyuk replies with a loud sigh, hitting one last button to lock the computer. “Talk to him. It’s miserable seeing you guys mope. Well, Bobby moping. You playing some Koo-version of hide and seek. And it’s not cool. This craft is _small_ , Junhoe.”

“He doesn’t know how to mope. He’s an _alien_.”

“With feelings. Like you and me and Yunhyeong and— maybe _just_ me and Yunhyeong.” Donghyuk picks up Junhoe’s tablet and slides the stylus back into its slot neatly. Always by the book, always so orderly. And it could have easily been him or Yunhyeong who were stuck to Bobby in the dream—Junhoe’s thought of that more times than he’d like to admit—but it wasn’t. They’d woken up just an hour after going under, and taken back control of the ship. Easier to do things went you weren’t entirely occupied by an otherworldly fantasy, Junhoe surmised. “You’ve seen him _cry_.”

“That was a very sad, very tragic commercial abou—”

“Junhoe,” Donghyuk says, in a way that sounds so much like Junhoe’s mother that he sighs and concedes.

“Alright, what do you propose I do?”

“Let me drop you both off on a wasteland planet and you can have a nice, _rational_ talk about ho—”

“ _Donghyuk_ ,” Junhoe echoes, kicking his chair.

“Talk to him. Ask him how much he remembers.”

“That’s the point, I don’t want talk about… to talk about all the weird _thoughts_ we had, _I_ had, about him.” Junhoe exhales, glancing balefully up at the prisoners. This cargo trip was supposed to be somewhat fun. He’d planned _sightseeing_ detours for Bobby—and perhaps Yunhyeong and Donghyuk if he felt like it—and now none of _that_ was going to come to fruition.

“You think this is about you?” Donghyuk asks, raising an eyebrow. He looks amused, which means he’s up to no good. “That the whole life you had in there, that was only _you_? Junhoe, have you seen our brains compared to his brain? I’m sure Doctor Nam back home showed you a neurological map, right? When we put him through the scanner that first time?”

“Are you saying I’m stupid?”

“I’m saying we’re all stupid, compared to what his brain can do. In the survival of the fittest, _we’re_ not the fittest. Just,” Donghyuk pauses, eyebrows furrowing slightly in search of the right word, “easily persuaded into violence.”

“There’s a point in there somewhere,” Junhoe says patronisingly, snagging his tablet back, “but I’m not sure I wanna hear it.”

“Talk to him. We have a lot of time left on this journey. You wanna venture through deep space in awkward silence?”

“It’s working out well so far.” Donghyuk shoots him a pointed look. “Fine. Okay. I’ll talk to him.”

 

 

/

 

 

It’s easy to find Bobby if Junhoe wants to. Like clockwork, he eventually ends up in the pilot’s seat, watching a vast inky blackness sail past them. One long-term mission is enough to put Junhoe off the sight forever, but Bobby sees something with those dark blue eyes of his that, evidently, none of them can. That, or he’s the kind of person who enjoys staring at white noise.

But he’s not there when Junhoe heads up, and Junhoe finds himself disappointed that, for once, the chair’s empty. He’d built himself up for this, had a speech planned and everything ( _it happened, and now it’s time to move on, preferably with you forgetting all the parts where I sucked your very human cock_ ), but now that all of that has nowhere to go... Junhoe kicks the loose panelling on the side of the bridge shut, and settles down into the chair with a huff. Yunhyeong’s mug is still here, half a biscuit floating around in it that doesn’t look as appetising as it does tragic.

“And he complains about _me_ being unhygienic,” Junhoe grumbles, leaning back in the chair. This is the view Bobby enjoys so much, and all Junhoe can see is space and more space. Once you’ve seen one chunk of space, you’ve seen all chunks of space. It’s like an aquarium, although Junhoe doesn’t bother pointing that out to Bobby any more because he doesn’t understand the concept of caging fish up for viewing.

“Someday you’re going to take me to the fish zoo, right?” comes Bobby’s voice from behind him, and Junhoe’s proud to say that he doesn’t react. Much.

“That depends on your behaviour,” Junhoe returns, not even turning to look at Bobby. He’s starting to not expect to see tanned skin instead of dark blue anymore. “And how much you try and read my mind.”

“Sorry,” Bobby apologises, sliding into the seat next to his. “I told you—”

“You can’t help it.” Junhoe sighs, tearing his eyes away from deep space to look at something that glimmers even brighter. “I know.”

“It’s not just that. I can hear you clearer now. Across the spacecraft, when we’re in different rooms. The… they did something to my head,” Bobby explains. He’s trying to keep a straight face, a calm, rational tone, but there’s an undercurrent of something shaky that has Junhoe nudging Bobby’s socked feet with his boot. “You’re feeling sad. Sympathetic. You don’t have to be.”

“Yeah, but they fucked with _my_ head, too, so I know what that feels like. Must be worse for you,” Junhoe points out, wondering how Bobby would take it if Junhoe tried to take his hand. It’s not that it’s a new thing for them, but he doesn’t want Bobby to think that there are certain things Junhoe expects of him for their closeness. Thinking about it alone makes his stomach twist.

“It wasn’t so bad at first,” Bobby says, settling back against the chair. He’s wearing a small smile that Junhoe’s seen a thousand, a million times before. Except not quite. “When I didn’t know yet, before the nightmares started. The life we had, meeting in that city on Earth—”

“Donghyuk said our minds were trying to compensate for all the holes in our histories,” Junhoe says. Factually, echoing Donghyuk word for word.

“ _Sex and the City_?”Junhoe raises his eyebrow and Bobby laughs. “Remember? You said you accidentally picked it up and we ended up watching it. Right at the beginning of this trip.”

“Jesus, you’re telling me _that’s_ where I got the idea for the first time we met?”

“No, I’m saying that’s where _I_ got the idea,” Bobby says, slowly, dark blue eyes fixed on Junhoe like he’s trying to tell him something important, “it wasn’t _all_ you. The stuff about the—” Bobby gives Junhoe a significant onceover and Junhoe presses back into his seat, embarrassed “—maybe that stuff is you. But you couldn’t have known about my family.”

“Your parents,” Junhoe says, coming to the slow realization that he can recall them with startling clarity. If not their faces, then fragments of their smiles, the curve of their hands around his shoulders, the warm affection that poured freely. “And your brother.”

“I didn’t want to believe it wasn’t real. I wanted _so much_ for them to be there that I—” Bobby pauses, swallowing, fingers twisting into each other on his lap “—I let myself believe that was all there was.” Something hot snakes up Junhoe’s throat—like this loss is _his_ , like he knows what it feels like to lose people so dear to him—and he takes one of Bobby’s hands in his, watching him carefully. “But there was you. And you were so…”

Junhoe laughs before Bobby can finish the sentence, because he suddenly knows what’s coming. The hot tightness in his throat dissipates, dims into warmth, into a sort of fondness that Junhoe wasn’t aware he possessed. And maybe he didn’t. “What, naive? Open?” Junhoe asks, meeting Bobby’s gaze challengingly.

But what Bobby says is, “It’s you when you don’t have anyone else to pretend to be,” and Junhoe feels like he’s been slit with a sudden sharpness for Bobby to lay open. “Different, but still you.”

“I said I wanted to forget it happened,” Junhoe says quietly, figuring this is an everything on the table type situation, “but I don’t. I mean, we could if you want to. If you think that it’s weird because— I think we passed our fifth year anniversary which is just—” Junhoe makes a sound with his mouth and Bobby laughs (warm, against his throat, his arm solid around Junhoe’s waist) and says, “I think I get it. It happened. We don’t have to complicate it.”

“You’re spending _way_ too much time with Donghyuk,” Junhoe complains.

“One of us needs the wherewithal to explain all the confusing emotions you people have,” Bobby justifies with a shrug. “If it were up to me—” He pauses, abruptly, like he’d said something wrong.

“What?” He can feel Bobby’s racing pulse under his palm and he wonders, not for the first time, if Bobby gets antsy sometimes, when he’s around Junhoe, like his skin is too tight for him, like something might reach boiling point and spill over.

“If it were up to me,” Bobby repeats slowly; Junhoe may not like space very much, but there’s something to be said about the way it’s reflected in Bobby’s bright eyes, against his skin, in a way that his dream could never replicate, “the dream would be the starting point.”

**Author's Note:**

> i. inspired by the holup m/v.  
> ii. this is a slice from a larger AU where bobby's an alien and junhoe belongs to a rebel faction. together they go angsting through space.  
> iii. shoutout to gerti who's not only my beta-reader but is the reason this fic exists in the first place (and also made this aMAZING [ALIEN!BOB ART](https://twitter.com/ikonout/status/798480759296180224))


End file.
